Expert Commentators

One thing I always enjoy is the commentators the network gets. The best ones are very helpful to viewers, and they do a lot of homework to catch us up on sports that we may not have been following in the inter-games years.

Some of the best experts are often in the less familiar sports. For example, I just watched a really articulate woman take us through the finals of a women's skeet-shooting match. Guns aren't something I generally enjoy, but this woman made the sport not only understandable but interesting. Apparently the eventual winner, American Kimberly Rhode, has just earned her fifth individual gold in five consecutive Olympics. Rhode didn't win all these golds in the same discipline, because as the commentator explained, the IOC abolished the sport the athlete first won in, trap shooting, so she had to train for another sport. Wow! So the commentator managed to draw me in by telling me what people in that sports community would find important.

What other commentators has anyone on GS been impressed by? I always like Rowdy Gaines in swimming, for example.

Sidebar to this topic: it is so cool to realize what some of the venues are here! I think the shooting is being held in some sort of royal military facility, and of course the tennis is at Wimbledon. Honestly, it's like seeing the Olympics in Narnia.